Just had my first play through with a Ardent force and honestly compared to how I felt playing Necrotic I felt evil (SPOILERS FOR CAMPAIGN)- so when you hit the castle fortress dead king is pretty brutal, remove the eyes so they don't come back, and there are rarely options to be kind. With the necrotic you can opt to spare human, often dialogue stretches out to make the human seem near insane in their with to kill. Whilst as a human your options seem more aggressive.

I love that the races are given complex politics that give that individuals choice but I cant help but speculate the Human have been duped into fighting the necrotic and the necrotic forced into siding with two actually evil parties to survive. Did the necrotic escape the evil that is manipulating the humans into fighting? Just felt there was a lot of tonal differences between the human and necrotic, this I really liked and congrats to the team for giving the same area of play with two very distinct feels.

As a human, you feel you are being invaded. They see their loved ones bodies being raised from the grave and 'repurposed'. Of course they'll be protective and vicious.

As a necrotic, you feel you are just doing what it takes to survive. You take over bodies because you think it's just something being unused. You have no direct malice to others... you just want to survive.

I would say the humans are bigots more than broadly evil.
They didn't listen to the necrotic side of the story, and it's their intolerance of the awakening process that started the conflict and indirectly created the Underworld Alliance (My impression is the Underworld races are the allies the necrotic have not necessarily the allies they wanted to have).

That said, that was like a thousand years ago. Since then the Necrotic have taken the most genocidally inclined races on Enthrath and organized them into an even more dangerous alliance, that not only attempted to eradicate all surface dwellers once before, but are planning to do it again.

Right now, the necrotic are the "bad guys". And the humans have been defending the surface against agression from the Underworld races.

The humans should reach out to the necrotic and try to come to terms, if for no other reason that to sabotage the Underworld Alliance. However they won't because "the walking dead are an abomination" and the necrotic are jerks to humans often enough to make it hard to call out how bigoted that is and have anyone listen to you.

I haven't played as Shin yet, but Necrotic certainly seem much less evil than the Vennen and Dwarves. The campaign certainly doesn't reveal much about Necrotic motives, though, so it's hard to say anything for sure.

I haven't played as Shin yet, but Necrotic certainly seem much less evil than the Vennen and Dwarves. The campaign certainly doesn't reveal much about Necrotic motives, though, so it's hard to say anything for sure.

Shin's have no innocence they want to wipe out Coyoles and enslave anything left. They have literally nothing to feel bad about them except Ito maybe.

I think I've made my feelings on this clear previously- yep, the humans are jerks. Or rather, were jerks, so eventually the necrotics decided to be jerks back. We've heard how the conflict started from both sides, and I'm still with the Necrotic- they show up, using these bodies no one is bothering to use, the humans go apeshit because that's desecration, the necrotic try to come to an agreement but get attacked a bunch, they wander off and form the alliance to strike back, we end up with the current state of affairs. Even now, the humans are hugely unreasonable and wildly dedicated to their long dead kings for no particular reason other than "king". I felt awful killing Finanif (Midnight Shepard), he seemed like a reasonable guy.

So yeah, ironically, the pseudo hive mind has far more free thinkers than the humans, and is way more sympathetic. I'll side with the necrotic over the humans every time.

Well, Shin'Hare are also fed lies since they're born. The first thing you know about coyotles from Sora is "that they eat their pups when they're hungry". Doesn't help them to have a higher view on coyotles. This is NOT helped by the Coyotle's babble being barely comprehensible, even for neutral minds - let alone one filled with negative bias toward the species. Coyotles are terrible diplomats IMO.

Honestly, Shin'Hare struck me as far less evil than I expected them to be. The emphasis that the instructor of the tutorial zone puts on the "need to sacrifice some for the good of many" seems to mean it's not something that's commonly accepted in the overall population, at least not in their outer territory. Their military government also has far less reach than you could imagine - the PC is a vagrant before he stumble on an assignement, and it's case doesn't seems that rare since the next Shin'Hare NPC you encounter outside of the tutorial zone is a freelancer heading for the dwarf outpost.

All considered, yes, they're not "good" per see, but they do not seem inherently evil either. They are far more "human" than the Ardent usually portray them.

Sorry but breaking into tombs, stealing the corpses of peoples' beloved ancestors then performing possession rituals on the bodies is not very innocent. It's a pretty hostile act by any measure and the humans are pretty justified in going ape over it. I don't think the Necrotic are necessarily evil either just by virtue of this (there may be other things they do which are though), they pretty much have to grab these human corpses in order to grow. Conflict just seems unavoidable here.

Sorry but breaking into tombs, stealing the corpses of peoples' beloved ancestors then performing possession rituals on the bodies is not very innocent. It's a pretty hostile act by any measure and the humans are pretty justified in going ape over it. I don't think the Necrotic are necessarily evil either just by virtue of this (there may be other things they do which are though), they pretty much have to grab these human corpses in order to grow. Conflict just seems unavoidable here.

it is completely innocent to those who do not worship the bodies of the dead. The initial bodies the necrotic took over were long dead nobles, people that no living human even knew. I believe the story even mentions that no one had even been coming to visit the tombs.

It might be because I have no spiritual beliefs but to me there is nothing wrong with what those first necrotic did. I can understand not wanting to see your recently lost loved ones walking around with a new personality but that could have been easily prevented by peacefully dealing with the necrotic and making them aware of the way humans feel about the bodies of those they know.

The humans completely irrational response to the necrotic started this entire war and it will continue it long after it could have been ended.